Sudbury silver penny worth £600 set for sale in rare coin collection

Rare coins minted in Sudbury are to go under the hammer. ANL-160316-115819001

An “excessively rare” coin made in Sudbury nearly one thousand years ago is to be sold at auction.

The silver penny was made in Sudbury sometime between 1042 and 1066 shortly before the landmark Battle of Hastings, in 1066, and during the reign of one of the last Anglo-Saxon Kings, Edward The Confessor.

Where exactly in Sudbury the coin was made is a mystery which may never be solved. But fascinatingly the name of the so-called moneyer – the man who oversaw the production of coins in Sudbury during Edward The Confessor’s reign – is known and it is featured on the Sudbury penny.

His name was Folcwine and as moneyer it was his job to make sure that the weight, purity and fineness of coins and the dies needed to make the coins were correct.

The Sudbury penny will be auctioned at Spink in Bloomsbury, London, on Tuesday, when it is expected to fetch between £400 and £600.

Auctioneers Spink said the coin is “excessively rare...Sudbury is an extremely rare mint for Edward The Confessor.”

Spink said that the coin has ‘an attractive tone’ and is ‘very fine in parts’.

It is among nearly four hundred rare Anglo-Saxon and Norman coins lovingly collected over a lifetime by former Conservative MP Ian Stewart, 80, now Lord Stewartby.

The collection is set to fetch around a quarter of a million pounds at the auction in London.

It is the first of five auctions at Spink of Lord Stewartby’s coin collection and the whole collection could sell for the best part of one million pounds.

Spink said that the Stewartby coin collection is “one of the most extensive and important collections of English coins to come on the market in recent times.”

London coin dealers Baldwin’s are currently offering for sale - at £1,250 - a silver penny made at the Sudbury Mint during the reign (1100-1135) of King Henry I.